Eleven Weeks and One Day Ago. Somewhere in Belgravia
He and John were due to rendezvous near Simon Forster's Belgravia townhouse at 1:00 am, so he had had to kill several hours between the time he ran cowardly out of 221B Baker Street and the appointed time to meet John.
So he walked aimlessly around Green Park in utter misery. What have you done, you stupid git, he thought to himself. You kissed her. How had that happened? He both hated that it happened and hated that he'd ended it. That's what's called a paradox, he thought wryly. No, that's what called being an asshole. You, Sherlock, you just fucked things up royally. You were friends again. And now you'll have to break her heart all over again. You'll have to lie to her and tell her you have no feelings for her, not those kind anyway. You'll have to look into those eyes and say it was a mistake, merely a moment of confusion and overwrought emotions. That part would be true. But the rest—that he didn't want her that way—that would be a pure, quintessential Sherlock Holmesian lie.
But, he convinced himself, there are worlds separating what one wants and what one needs. Wasn't there some song or another saying that, in effect? He couldn't remember presently. The worst thing was that what he wanted most right at this moment—no, that was a lie—what he wanted second most at this moment was to get high. And while he could satiate his want of drugs, what he wanted more than drugs he could never satiate. There he sat on a park bench after midnight, mourning the loss of something he could never have. Drugs he could stay away from, he thought. Could he force himself to stay away from the other?
Thankfully, as the time marched closer to 1:00 am, he could put his dark ruminations aside and concentrate instead on terrorizing one Simon Forster. Well, when life gives you lemons, you squeeze the hell out of them.
A lamplight in Simon Forster's bedroom went on at 1:15 am, waking him up with a fright, a fright compounded exponentially upon finding Sherlock Holmes seated in his bed next to him and the other man who had met him at Gatwick the other day, whom he presumed to be Holmes's partner John Watson, sitting near the bottom of the bed.
"What the fuck? How did you get in here? How did you get past my security?"
"I could explain all that," Sherlock said, "but, honestly, does it matter? We're here, I think that's the salient point."
"What . . . what do you want? I'm calling my solicitor." Forster began to get out of his bed, reaching for his charging mobile phone on the nightstand when Sherlock took out a syringe filled with liquid and held it to the man's throat."
"You'll be dead by the time someone picks up. Now sit back and relax for now." Terrified, Forster slowly sat back against his headboard.
"What the Hell do you want?" Forster growled.
"Tonight we're going to play a game called 'Would You Rather.' Have you ever played it?" Forster just looked at the detective, confused and frightened. "The rules are quite easy, really. You'll be given two choices. Neither choice will be particularly pleasant, but you must necessarily choose between one or the other. There is no third choice, you understand. Well, technically, I suppose you do have a third choice. That third choice is me plunging this needle I have at your throat into your veins, killing you in—what did you say, John, in three seconds?"
"Three on the outside, two if his pulse is rapid, which, given his level of fear right now—my money'd be on two seconds."
"Well, I think it hardly matters. The point is that you die very quickly," Sherlock said. "Now, what are your real choices, you may well ask? Choice #1 is you telling us quickly and without any fuss or misdirection or ambiguity all the circumstances surrounding the downloading of certain photos onto a zip drive last week in New York City. If you do that, we leave and you go about living your life as you please."
"What's his second choice, Sherlock?" John asked, playing along in the game.
"That is an excellent question, John. Behind door #2 is this," Sherlock said, signaling John to pull a syringe out of his own coat pocket. "John has in his hands a syringe filled with—oh God, John, I'm so bad remembering these things."
"BS221B."
"That's right. BS221B. A drug developed for use in American CIA Black Sites expressly for the purpose of breaking the most torture-resistant terrorists. Once pumped into your veins you will experience a level of pain measured as 300 times more intense than those recorded during the average childbirth. The good news is that the rate for surviving the ordeal is 70%."
"No, you've got that flipped, Sherlock. Seventy percent die within an hour of being administered the drug."
"Oh, so 30% live. That's still not that bad, considering the syringe I have aimed at your throat right now has a zero percent survival rate."
"It's a classic glass-half empty, glass-half-full scenario," John added.
"Yes, yes it is. So, once injected with the syringe behind door #2, you'll experience unfathomable amounts of pain. One man that survived it likened it to—oh, help me again, John."
"To his internal organs being melted away with acid," John added helpfully.
"That does not sound pleasant to me."
"Nor to me," chuckled John.
"So, once your body starts seething, convulsing with pain, you'll do anything, anything to stop it. But there's only one thing that will stop the pain, Simon. That's what's behind door #3. John, will you do the honors?" At that, John pulled out yet another liquid-filled syringe. "That syringe contains the only form of relief available. It immediately stops the pain. And, believe me, you will want the pain to stop. And all you have to do to get that pain to stop is tell us what we want to know. And you will tell us, no matter how much you don't want to. What's the record for breaking a terrorist on this drug, John?"
"Forty-five seconds by Ali Anwar-Druat, who had previously been beaten and waterboarded to no avail."
"So, Simon, would you rather just answer our question and go back to sleep tonight and wake up and go about your life tomorrow as if nothing ever happened or would you rather try for a new record?" Forster said nothing, just sat there on the bed, trying to control his shaking. "Come now, we need an answer."
"What do you want to know?" Forster said shakily.
"Good choice, Simon. The photos, Simon, who did you give them to?"
"A woman, a um . . . a prostitute. She said her name was Gina. No last name. I don't know if that's her real name."
"Is this her?" Sherlock asked, showing him Gina Wilson's mugshot on his mobile phone.
"Yes, yes that's her," Foster said, excited to be pleasing his potential torturers.
"Where did you meet her?"
"At the bar at the Four Seasons."
"And you paid $2000 a night to fuck her?" Forster nodded, surprised that Sherlock knew that information. "Why did you give her the photos?"
"I didn't want to give them to her. She demanded them the last night we were together."
"Demanded them how?"
"She had photos of her own—of me," Forster said miserably.
"How did she know you had those photos to begin with?"
"On our first night together, I wanted her to do some things and we looked at the photos to . . . you know . . . " Sherlock did know and thus punched Forster in the face, breaking his nose.
"Sherlock!" John yelled, fearing his friend losing control.
Forster held his nose, moaning, and said, "You said you wouldn't hurt me if I told you everything."
"I lied. One more question, Simon, and we'll leave you alone. You picked her up at the bar on the first night. What about the second and third nights?"
"She gave me her number."
"Excellent, Simon. Do you still have that number?"
"Yeah, it's in my mobile."
"Be so kind as to get it." Forster did as told. "You played the game very well tonight, Simon. You get to live. I know you'll be tempted to call the police after we leave, but let me caution you on that front. If we have access to top secret drugs used by the CIA, do you really think the gits at the local Constabulary can protect you?"
Sherlock and John left Simon Forster in his bed, bloodied and frightened.
When finally out of Forster's house and onto the streets of Belgravia, Sherlock congratulated John on his excellent plan. "Say, what's actually in the syringes?"
"Saline."
"And who the Hell is Ali Anwar-Druat?"
"Nice guy. Runs the grocery down the lane from my house."
"Ah, clever. And BS221B, nice touch."
"I thought so too."
Reviews are things of beauty and keep the demons away and the muses close by.
**I had way too much fun imagining the torture scene. Perhaps I'm the one that needs a therapist.